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5 years ago ::
May 06, 2008 - 2:03AM
#21
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Date Joined:
Aug 21, 2007
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Well, it seems that you are trying to reconstruct the simulationist aspect that have been carefully stripped from the game. HP now represents luck, morale, fatigue(all of which a nights sleep can do wonders for)
The point that seems to be missed is that the new healing rules allow you to control the flow of the adventure much better and with less guesswork and need for fudging to avoid TPK's.
You can plan on the players being at full for each encounter.
Every fight can be balls to the wall, tension filled spectacular fight. The wild cards of daily powers and action points arent enough to throw off your plans.
If you think that healing makes the players unstoppable killing machines that will stroll through your dungeons, you're still thinking in 3E terms, where you had to take it easy on the players in one fight if you wanted them to be able to get through another encounter that same day. I see that planning for only 2 encounters per day narrows that down and gives you a much better window of control, but the new rules should give you even better control.
Every fight can be a harrowing life or death experience because you don't have to worry about the players running back to the inn and wasting time on pointless metagaming.
You can push them to the edge every time, mark of the healing surges and get back into it.
If you cut the healing rules, you wont be able to build your encounters per the 4e rules. They will assume that your players are ready for a full blown all out encounter, when really they are ready for the standard 3e 'uses 1/4 of the party's resources' encounter.
As far as realism goes, lets consider soldiers who survived hours or days or even weeks of combat. If a few hours sleep, reading a letter from home, a cigarette or chocolate bar, or simply not hearing stuff explode for a few minutes didn't give back 'hit points' how the heck did we manage to win the second world war?:D
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5 years ago ::
May 06, 2008 - 5:14AM
#22
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Every fight can be a harrowing life or death experience because you don't have to worry about the players running back to the inn and wasting time on pointless metagaming.
This sentence gives me all the information I need.
For me D&D is 1st the "pointless metagaming" as you call it and then the H&S aspect that is being put into highlight with 4e.
Starcraft Saga Edition: http://sc2se.wikispaces.com/
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5 years ago ::
May 06, 2008 - 5:36AM
#23
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Date Joined:
Aug 21, 2007
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OK, I see I got a mix of responses, more against my proposed house rule (as I expected). Too bad I am in a different time zone then most of the visitors of this forum so I couldn't reply to certain posts right away so I will just give some general responses to no one in particular.
HOUSE RULE no2: I also need to mention that I plan to halve the XP gain from fights and give XP for roleplaying and ideas like I do now. Also I think that "the all players have same XP no matter what their contribution or even showing up for sessions is" recommendation of 4e is bull*hit. I am not a kid, do not play with kids and will not play with kids or such kind of thinking. In the REAL world you do not get the same reward with less effort and will never do. I see no reason to use this kind of thinking in D&D.
Well I wanted to replay to the comment of why change it when I can just have 2 encounters if I want:
First, I like more realistic gameplay, and I want players that got into a bad (tough) fight to not just continue forward like unstoppable machines (especially not at low levels). I want them to have 1-2 tough fights and then need to lick their wounds and look for cover for a while. It makes them realize they are not supermen (or superelves :D ), and makes for interesting and bit different gameplay.
My sessions are mostly not dungeon romps, but different kind of adventures. I like big, tough fights instead of many smaller ones.
If I let them have full resting rules and normal number of healing surges even after 2 encounters (even tough ones) the rules would let them just keep going, and I would need to railroad too much to stop that (like removing access to further enemies without real logic behind it). This way it is easy, rules say 4 encounters, I halve the HS and remove the full hp after 6 hours and they cannot do 4 encounters but 2 even if they wanted. And if I ever want to give them more then, then I will put weak fights for the first couple and then 2 tough ones.
The reply to the 3.5 is also about having 4 encounters:
Well that is recommended but not required, I am pretty adept at depleting PC resources after 2 encounters. I see no way of doing that in 4e after 2 encounters if I go by 4e RAW.
Okay, I have to ask --- why exactly are you switching to 4E? The game is obviously not what you want so why break the game before even getting it? Why not stick with 3.5 or even possibly look at some of the other systems that are out there?
While I will be the first to admit that I have some concerns over the direction they have taken it (I really believe they have gone too far and dumbed the system down too much) I am holding my final judgment until I get my hand on the actual rules and have played a few sessions. If I don't like it we'll either stick with 3.5 or move to another system. There really is no point to making massive changes to the core part of a game system - that generally creates more problems than it solves.
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5 years ago ::
May 06, 2008 - 7:22AM
#24
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Date Joined:
Jan 27, 2008
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As far as realism goes, lets consider soldiers who survived hours or days or even weeks of combat. If a few hours sleep, reading a letter from home, a cigarette or chocolate bar, or simply not hearing stuff explode for a few minutes didn't give back 'hit points' how the heck did we manage to win the second world war?:D
I think you've hit the nail on the head, here.
Archangel, if you're trying to make the game more simulationist, you might want to consider making a less lethal variant of the wound/vitality system from Unearthed Arcana. Wound damage would represent actual serious wounds, whereas vitality would represent things like morale, etc.
I know one of my plans is to include a wound/vitality system. I'm waiting until I've seen the rules in full to actually make the system, and I intend to play at least a short campaign without the system before implementing it. What I have so far is that crits generally do a little damage to wounds and full to vitality (more damage to wounds if the weapon had a larger critical multiplier in 3.x), damage beyond a "damage threshold" (from Star Wars SAGA, dunno if they're including it in 4e) does a single point of wound damage (exceeding the threshold multiple times in one strike increases the damage to wounds), and healing surges only heal vitality damage. If this looks like what you're shooting for, feel free to use and modify it.
Incidentally, I realize that you don't like the "full night's rest for all that ails you" approach, but it really isn't that different from 3.x. Unless you just got done with an absolutely harrowing day (or were really low level), the cleric generally still had enough cure spells left at the end of the day to heal everyone up to near full, then replenish his spells the next day. Hell, even if he were completely out, come the next day he'd be full up and could heal everyone up to full and still have enough spells to be useful for a while.
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5 years ago ::
May 06, 2008 - 7:40AM
#25
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Date Joined:
May 11, 2004
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Am I the only person who's actually going to play with the RAW before starting to mess with them? You know, maybe it's just me, but I trust full rules with years of playtesting behind them (plus a few months of my own direct experiences with those rules) more than my own theoretical judgements from incomplete leaked information...
Nope, you're not the only one. Not only for the reasons you gave but also I find houseruling to be ane xercise fraught with unintended consequences in the best of circumstances. No way I am going to do it blindly.
As to the OP, the 'Six Hour Rule' doesn't bother me in the least. Yeah its unrealistic, but so are a lot of things in the game. And as a practical matter, even from day one of a groups adventuring career, I have found that there are only two circumstances in which the group ever has to spend more than one night healing anyway. The first is if the cleric is down, then they may need a night or two to get him back up, depending on how badly beaten up everybody else is. The second is if the party is high level, and is beaten up very badly and the cleric is low on spells, then it may take an extra day to get the clerics healing back and another day to gird up for resuming the adventure the next day. So the rule actually changes little.
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5 years ago ::
May 06, 2008 - 9:02AM
#26
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Date Joined:
Aug 26, 2005
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I've noticed something.
While this isn't 100% true and I've seen a couple individual posts that go against the grain, it seems like the majority of people who are clamoring for a harder, grittier approach to 4E healing are almost all people who say they want to DM with that style, not people who say that they want to play in that style. Now, I'll grant that typically people DM the kinds of games they want to play in - I keep running Eberron games because I wish someone would DM one for me, for example :P - but it seems like almost everyone is approaching this as something they want to inflict on their players. That bothers me, because it fits it into the same category as tracking ammunition or encumberance - they're all something that very few players (in my experience) actually enjoy, and that are usually enforced by a DM for the first few sessions in an attempt to make things more "realistic" before everyone concludes that they're slowing things down and interfering with the flow of the story.
Again, I'm sure there are exceptions, but this is reminiscent of the arguments I've seen in the past about low-magic campaign settings; 9 times out of 10, it seems the only people who want a low-magic setting are the people DMing the game, not the people who actually have to play in it.
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5 years ago ::
May 06, 2008 - 9:24AM
#27
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Date Joined:
Mar 11, 2008
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Eh to me this is another "AS the Dm i must try to wear the players down to 5 hp and no spells by the end of every day adventuring" thread just think how long the great fantasy novels of the world would have been LOTR especially would have been had we seen "And so the Frodo and the hobbits went back to Bree for the fifth time after they encountered yet another party of orcs."
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5 years ago ::
May 06, 2008 - 11:17AM
#28
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Date Joined:
Jan 27, 2008
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I've noticed something.
While this isn't 100% true and I've seen a couple individual posts that go against the grain, it seems like the majority of people who are clamoring for a harder, grittier approach to 4E healing are almost all people who say they want to DM with that style, not people who say that they want to play in that style. Now, I'll grant that typically people DM the kinds of games they want to play in - I keep running Eberron games because I wish someone would DM one for me, for example :P - but it seems like almost everyone is approaching this as something they want to inflict on their players. That bothers me, because it fits it into the same category as tracking ammunition or encumberance - they're all something that very few players (in my experience) actually enjoy, and that are usually enforced by a DM for the first few sessions in an attempt to make things more "realistic" before everyone concludes that they're slowing things down and interfering with the flow of the story.
Again, I'm sure there are exceptions, but this is reminiscent of the arguments I've seen in the past about low-magic campaign settings; 9 times out of 10, it seems the only people who want a low-magic setting are the people DMing the game, not the people who actually have to play in it.
This is a good point, and I never really thought about it like this. I think a lot of it is related to your Eberron situation, however. I know, in my case, the reason I come up with alternate rulesets for more simulationist play (or for different fighting styles, new weapons, or what have you) is because that's the kind of game I'd like to play in. However, because it's my system, I intend to be the first one to actually DM a campaign with it. If it works out nicely, I'll try to get the other DM's in my group to start using the rules, but I'm not going to walk up to one and say "Here's a great system I came up with. Make a campaign with it so I can play."
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5 years ago ::
May 06, 2008 - 1:18PM
#29
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Okay, I have to ask --- why exactly are you switching to 4E? The game is obviously not what you want so why break the game before even getting it? Why not stick with 3.5 or even possibly look at some of the other systems that are out there?
Because I do not like D&D as it is. For instance SW Saga Edition is almost perfect as far as I am concerned but it would take to much effort to convert that into D&D so I am going to play 4e and use house rules to make it more similar to 3.5e and Saga.
As for other systems, I got all the books for latest WW edition but could not make myself learn all the rules (although I played the edition before that one and know those rules, but these ones are much different). I also have Arcana Evolved but again, although better then 3.5e that system is not close enough to Saga.
Archangel, if you're trying to make the game more simulationist, you might want to consider making a less lethal variant of the wound/vitality system from Unearthed Arcana. Wound damage would represent actual serious wounds, whereas vitality would represent things like morale, etc.
Tried that in a 3.5e game about 2 years ago. Both me and the players hated it, it slowed the game down too much and was a hell to track. Also played with that system in the old SW PnP and hated it there as well.
While this isn't 100% true and I've seen a couple individual posts that go against the grain, it seems like the majority of people who are clamoring for a harder, grittier approach to 4E healing are almost all people who say they want to DM with that style, not people who say that they want to play in that style. Now, I'll grant that typically people DM the kinds of games they want to play in - I keep running Eberron games because I wish someone would DM one for me, for example - but it seems like almost everyone is approaching this as something they want to inflict on their players. That bothers me, because it fits it into the same category as tracking ammunition or encumberance - they're all something that very few players (in my experience) actually enjoy, and that are usually enforced by a DM for the first few sessions in an attempt to make things more "realistic" before everyone concludes that they're slowing things down and interfering with the flow of the story.
I see no problem in this. After all the DM is the one who creates the world and the story and sets the rules. The players know these rules before the game starts and can choose to play with them or find another DM. But my experience tells me that everyone wants to be a player and none the DM.
After all the golden rule of D&D is that you should not play with people that you would not be friends with, and most people choose to be friends with people that they share similar life views.
Eh to me this is another "AS the Dm i must try to wear the players down to 5 hp and no spells by the end of every day adventuring" thread just think how long the great fantasy novels of the world would have been LOTR especially would have been had we seen "And so the Frodo and the hobbits went back to Bree for the fifth time after they encountered yet another party of orcs."
Well if Frodo (or better to say Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli) was fighting his level enemies he would need to take extensive rests. Of course they do not need to go back all the time when they are lvl 10+ and they fight Orcs.
Starcraft Saga Edition: http://sc2se.wikispaces.com/
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5 years ago ::
May 06, 2008 - 2:48PM
#30
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Date Joined:
Jan 25, 2004
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I'd be careful about reducing the number of healing surges as it affects different classes disproportionately. The defender classes will likely be the ones most frequently out of healing surges.
If you reduce the recovery of healing surges with an extended rest, I would probably make it a proportional system, rather than a fixed number or one that increased with level. Again to be fair to the characters that take more damage and those that have more healing surges. 1/3 the maximum number of healing surges probably works.
I'd still have characters recover their full hit points after an extended rest, since the actual hit points are a minority portion of their health (the majority being healing surges). Changing it doesn't really have the desired effect and adds an needless layer of complexity.
I would also consider limiting the recovery of daily powers to further equalize the effects of this change. If you only recover 1 daily power per extended rest, even characters that aren't down on healing surges would share the desire to rest for several days.
I advise against making the proposed changes to how cleric healing works. 4e was designed with the conscious effort to reduce the reliance on clerics for healing. Adding that back in makes clerics required and limits your players' choice in party composition.
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